LadyCrimson

Yes, just what we needed in a space exploration game - pet vs pet "arena" mini-game, that reminds of Star Wars 3d chess tech. The more they put stuff like this in NMS, the less interested I become in Light No Fire. I mean, one doesn't have to engage with this or the garbage truck additions, but since everyone assumes these are at least in part tech/reaction experiments re: LNF, it's not promising.

Crimson Desert - if you're the type who's only interested in combat/bosses and/or main quest following, you wont be engaging with maybe 60% of the game's content, I swear anything puzzle-y is 1/5th of he interactive content. I'd guess 60-80hrs of MQ and 300+ of "other." And the game's achievement list is - yeah, most aren't going to engage much with that I think. Just saying. The most interesting (or at least weirdest/different) gear options are very late game. Some people may not even get to it before most combat scenarios are actually over. So many things you don't even realize are options, for ages, because the game doesn't mention/telegraph it all. Even stuff like the world map icon and POI information/how it works is obscure. EDIT: like a black dot in a while circle of POI icon = haven't completed all things, while to find out if you've been to a cave already, you Journal and look up text cave description and there's one or two white dots. >.> And that dragon in videos? Super late game. And it has a cooldown timer and stuff. Again, just saying. I dunno guys - a beautiful and immersive environmental world, with lots of micro-exploration and simple quest busywork, but gameplay/rewards etc. still feel unrewarding. If you really connect with the former, you can mostly forgive the latter, but it can make motivation sag a lot by mid-game. That all said - there was one mid-chapter section where the big battle was actually fun/interesting. Tons of enemies with big aggro range+progress bar, but they didn't respawn, more than one subgoal to do. It felt vast and battlefield like, fast, and engaging. If the rest had felt more like that, it'd would've been so much better. EDIT: oh, and story-bosses are relatively "easy" - especially since you can heal-revive spam like mad if desired - but some of the side bosses are brutal. The one-two you're dead in the first 3 seconds and/or their main attack, types, until you retry a dozen times and get lucky/figure it out. Or leave and go back later. Oh, I like the combat music in general, and the combat/boss cutscenes are actually fun to watch. Mostly.

Got a Husky. Don't use it much, since they don't leap onto my shoulder. Or stand on hindlegs, or shake paws, or anything. But doggos are quieter. "Cat, help me." "Meow, no you help me." I've figured out why the wind/trees have super strong wind dynamics. It's so characters hair will fly around beautifully! Not so obvious here, but some of the longhaired witch's hair movement is awesome. Wasn't at all into Kliff's looks until they put in the "don't show helmet" feature, and suddenly in the wind he's kinda generic-stoic handsome, and it's mainly the hair movement. :P I don't know what weapon this guy is using, but I want it. All they dropped was the fuel tanks tho. :/

Crimson Desert - Probably 70-75 hrs now. I get close, sometimes, to thinking "this is it, this is where it'll super-click and become a 9/10" but then it doesn't. There are just too many 3/10 moments/situations to balance it out. Heh. Still, it's good enough (and ofc, never done it before), that I keep playing. --- I spent 2-3 hours pick-pocketing bunny-masked nobles of their gold bars (you can sell these at a Bank for 500 silver). So I'm now "rich". You don't really need lots of currency, at all, in the game, although some small costs do add up over time. But it was funny in a weird way so I kept doing it. --the base "camp" feature is more involved then I originally thought. Not in a building way, but in tons of tasks to upgrade and get some resources, even a bit of farming. All of which are kinda half-arsed, but some may like it a lot. Mostly it's a way to centralize your npc shopping and I guess warm fuzzies re: gathering all the Greymane's again. --when a mission tells me to "clear an area", I wish I could actually "clear" an area. Instead it's a stupid fill a bar situation, where kill enough enemies to satisfy that bar, bang area resets/you've won/liberated. This is repetitive. Most of the time, they all flock towards you or endlessly respawn as well. I've completed some just standing around near an entrace gate of a large complex, watching red-dots on mini-map rushing towards me. This is lame. --POI and sidequest density does seem to shrink a bit the father out you go. Every region has some but Hernand is the most concentrated. --many enemy areas and bosses do not respawn if you've finished the quest related to them, making action-combat sparse in the long run, if that's your desired focus. --combat does become slightly more interesting - at least flashy and a bit more AoE factors - with more varied/higher level scoket gems and skill powers. I think they're called Abyss gears, but to me, such will always be socket-gems, sorry. --flying enemies suck in a largely melee-centric game. Axiom Force powers and bows work but yeah, they suck.

I saw it before the title edit, and started wheeze-laughing around 20 seconds in and never quite stopped. He did pretty good at staying in chr/straight-face plus his jabs at DLSS 5, heh.

Crimson Desert - EDIT - TLDR - my love/hate relationship with the game continues, basically. There really are 10/10 moments, most of the time it's a 7, and then there are the 4/10 moments/aspects. Heh. --- I think I'm a little past half-way the Main Quest - which is nowhere near "completion" of game content, mind. I might stop there for a while and just go my own way for as long as I'm able. I'm beginning to really dislike the MQ and their steps. It's boring/repetitive and hugely time-wasting re: back and forth. You can't skip-speed dialogues (only FFWD in cutscenes) and sometimes it goes on and on. The sky-Abyss puzzling is also annoying over time, even while visually/design amazing at times. --- Kliff, so far, has developed zero personality. He mostly grunts, outside of some MQ dialogues. eg, I find him easy to ignore, he's just a blank avatar while you're running around exploring. --- the poster-bounties are so not worth it because you have to take a criminal back to a faction's jail by foot or horseback. Can't teleport. And some of them are REALLY FAR AWAY. I spent an hour plus looking for a (horse) safe/non-hostile path back, once. And if you don't do them, the posters stay in your inventory forever, can't even drop them. I stopped looking at/picking up those posters. --- the 2 other playable characters, one issue is increasing their skills and refining their gear to high levels takes away from increasing the others skills/gears, because you'd need triple the resources and special Abyss skill stone thingies AND the socket "gems" to do all three equally. Maybe you can get there post-MQ with grind, but most aren't going to want to do that initially/for a long time. You're gonna mostly focus/stick on Kliff, because Kliff is the MQ One. --- what this game does well is have so many different things/systems to do and ways to do it, that players can decide what the game is, for them. I mean, technically, after chapt 6 or so, which is around where I am (I've also heard chapt. 9, if you're into the other playable chrs), you could largely ignore the MQ for 200 hours if you really wanted, etc.

Crimson Desert - another big patch. At this rate it's going to be 40% a different game in a month. I think they're mostly trying to simplify/smooth out the early sections/areas and MQ fights to maintain a better early impression/retention of masses. Y'know, the 70% of gamers who never get past the first 1/3 of most games (me sometimes included, heh. I've been pushing out to other zones/regions and general mobs are still easy to kill in two's and fours - but what they do is ramp up the numbers/patrols/waves so it gets harder to manage camps/forts, with more danger of being overwhelmed if one tries to Leroy in/gets cornered. the occasional tougher or "leader" or side boss to make you use up your healing items. Anyway - this is going exactly like Enshrouded did, for me, where I like the game a lot one moment, then almost dislike it the next It waxes and wanes depending what one is tackling at any point in time. Kitty cute note: I only use the other two playable chrs. when games forces me to, but did recently discover if I summon the female PC to base camp, all my (now 12 or so) parked pets immediately flock/run to her, with all the cats jumping onto her shoulder AT ONCE. Kind of a visual nightmare really, all the tails and faces moving around on top of each other. But it is hilarious, and with oodles of "meow, meow, meow" to go with.

Eh. You get used to the notion. I think fires, lately, are more of a threat to any individual. Edit: when I was young, these small tremors happened all the time. They don't seem to occur as much in the past couple decades (where one can feel them at home, I mean), which could be a good or bad sign. Who knows.

Before there was YouTube, there were ... educational classroom videos.

Yeah, ofc different weapons have different attack patterns/skills. Spear is fun. Doesn't negate that the stats/dmg of each type ends up almost the same. I think most ppl don't upgrade lots of things/are still not even past chapt 3 and just haven't noticed. The puzzles are kinda interesting but I haven't found them hard (time consuming a bit at times) yet. And I liked the way Hogwart's game did puzzles a lot more. The no yellow paint notion seems more about the puzzles and features you may not realize even exist for 50 hours - there IS a marker to tell you general area to go to for quests. It's just one of those wide as ocean, deep as puddle sandboxy games. There will be "I love this" moments but also a lot of "this sucks/I'm bored".

Sadly no. There's tons of animals but so far they only seem to be for meat. I've become a butcher of chipmunks for food. 🤡

I spoiled my kitty and he got fat. -- j/k, it's a different black cat. At last a game where I can be a true "cat lady". Forget gameplay, I'll just tame cats for hours. Sadly, cannot rename. There's a few outfits to start, rumor has it one can get more. MUST GET.

Crimson Desert - 35ish-40ish hours in. I'm getting a little bored. --- maybe I'm missing something, but I feel like weapons/armor is mostly all the same, because of the upgrade system. If you upgrade anything enough - whether a seeming starter you buy in 1st city or some cool looking thing you looted, everything ends up with similar stats. You can eventually socket items and stick "gems" into them that give some bonuses/effects, but you can swap these out and put them into anything else, far as I can tell. This makes gearing feel more about cosmetics - what you like the look of - more than function. Which is good for those that don't want to be stuck with something "ugly" because it's the "best." But it means there's not much reason to care about finding a new armor, outside of do you think it looks badass. eg, loot hunting/treasure finding is boring/feels pointless after a while. I find nothing by looting that is "better" than what I've already upgraded and I have no desire to swap (meaning I'd have to upgrade new stuff, all over again). --- I don't know if it's the patch nerf or that I've already gear-upgraded much more than they expect, but combat, even MQ bosses, are so far easy. I've just button spammed them, food-healed a few times, didn't need any fancy moves, and win in 60 seconds. I'm sure I'd hit a "wall" somewhere late game perhaps but I was expecting boss-combat frustration and it's not there. I guess one could conceptualize that the upgrade system is like a Difficulty option. >.> --- MQ combat surges are visceral and very busy/large but eh Anyway, it's not that it's bad - but the appeal in this game is largely/simply visceral/visuals/cosmetic and for those that never tire of finding yet another small POI/cave/castle over the hill over there with mundane loot or simple quest, because it's discovery. And I do very much like discovery, but if you're talking 100's of hours of a map of untold size, I feel like I need to have more of a mental or game goal to go with - there is no base-building or mega resource hunting, outside of one time type gear upgrade costs, as example - but so far I already have enough "money" to not worry much re: general or frequent small purchases. City/regions have a "you're popular/respected" currency that is slow to accumulate but mostly that gets you - more cosmetic gear options. The visuals/vistas are great, but that only takes me so far before I get bored of looking at them. EDIT: oh, some exploration tedium after a while, is because the main traversal methods are too slow/drain stamina super fast. Enshrouded-gliding it's not. So far the best thing in the game for me long term is - you can gear up your pets with adorable costume pieces. SO CUTE. EDITEDIT: I think for most of the forum long-timers here, this would be a $30-40 game at best. But optimization/performance IS pretty good, if you're not trying to 4k it. :D

If you've never stumbled across this channel before, it's one of my faves. She has two channels, one with shorter/more edited grooming sessions and one with longer/less edited. Anyway - it's crazy, she's wonderful at job, she does both cats and dogs and rescues, and it's oddly entertaining/amusing.

The Fun Pimps partnered with Behaviour Interactive (I guess they made Dead by Daylight?) Steam :: 7 Days to Die :: A New Chapter for The Fun Pimps...Survivors, We’re excited to share some big news. The Fun Pimps have officially joined Behaviour Interactive. 7 Days to Die started back in Thanksgiving 2012, when two brothers cooked up a game ideaMy opinion on this: RIP 7 Days to Die. At least for us "long timers." Maybe I'll be wrong but eh. I think my main concern is whether this means the eventual removal of the ability to play older alpha's at whim, or reducing modability. For me either (or both) of those things would likely = uninstall.

Postscript: I'm definitely of the opinion that this is a game where one has to give it 10-20 hours before it starts to shine. You can judge two things in two hours: whether you're going to put up with/let yourself get used to the interface UI, and whether the way any story/chr stuff is done appeals to you. The rest is a slow burn. Combat gets more interesting, exploration gets more interesting, puzzles get more interesting - in a way, the 1st castle-region/starter area gives some bad impressions but get past that and there's a pretty good game. Not GOTY material tho. Unless continued and rapid patches turn that around.

Crimson Desert - they patched it again. there's now a personal stash function, although it seems mixed with the auto-collect wayward-loot function (it's the same chest), plus some control changes, plus some boss nerfs I guess (some will like that, some won't). A lot of other small things. Kliff now no longer feels like a 3-ton brick - maybe now he's a 1-ton brick. It's still an improvement. Anyway, I'm around 20-25 hours now, although much of that time initially was wandering starter castle region to amass lots of food (your heal potions) and revive orbs (ability to immediately continue boss fights, with a bit of health, if you die), and upgrading weapons/armor where possible. Because I'm a wuss and figure I'll need extra. :P So far I'd call this a 7.5/10 game. Higher if you like the mechanics/environment, lower if you dislike them etc. ---Main questline goes in chapters, with multi-parts to each Chapter. Doing these quests is pretty important for the first 4-5 chapters to unlock stuff, including some crafts, stores, npcs. Don't have to if you don't want, but you won't be able to access/do everything you may wander into, otherwise. ---definitely a sandbox-action game, with RPG elements. The story cutscenes are there, but yeah. ---exploration and mechanics (outside of the crazy control UI) are good and yes it's very desnse vs. empty. But they ARE a lot of MMO or fetch or "go kill the bandits for me" stuff. A few sidequests are more than that, and MQ stuff can be more involved. --- the main process of improving gear is upgrading with crafters and resources. So your sword gets +1 or 2 per upgrade - do that often enough you can way outlevel current mobs. But it does take some resource-gathering time. If you don't upgrade your gear periodically and try to rely on randomly finding something better, you're likely gonna rapidly die to mobs/mini-bosses the farther from the starter-castle you go. Diablo/PoE/or even some more focused story-rpg type loot progress this is absolutely not. I'm having fun. It's kind of obsessive, but for me, not the "sleep, what's sleep" type of obsessive. It's more the load-save, 3-6 hrs blink by, then I feel like a 12+hr break. EDIT: oh - I have the particles effect at around 30-40%, which so far hasn't felt too busy/ostentatious etc. I think if you have it at 0, it starts to affect things like visibility of rain. EDITEDIT: weather sometimes affects resources found. Rainstorm - toads/salamanders and other such appear to collect, sunny, it's butterflies and insects, which have different purposes. Small stuff like that.

Oh you. :D I didn't notice it while taking the shot because I was just staring at the SOFT KITTY WARM KITTY. Hehe. But yeah. It's not something you're going to notice in normal gameplay - typical 3/4 top down 3rd person - outside of photo mode or full zoomed in and spinning the camera. There is a 1st person view in the game but I think you cannot fight/combat while in it - it'll knock you into the overhead 3rd person. I have maybe 8 hrs of total gameplay and so far it's a mix of 50% "wow, cool, totally rad" and 50% "F! How annoying, how unnecessary, balderdash!" I can also begin to see that while you can technically free-explore probably as much as you want, and there are some things you can discover/do on your own right away maybe, many of the mechanic features and/or larger things to do are going to be kinda gated by main questline progress steps, at least in the first several "chapters".

Crimson Desert: Taming a pet requires "100 appreciation points" - you can only get 25pts per day (petting it). Dogs generally stay in place so you can return to a spot each day to pet it. The cats, so far, because you have to pick them up and pet while cradling them in arms, then put them down again, do not stay in place (they tend to run off) and if I return to an area I can't ever seem to find it again to pet it again. Hadn't seen a cat I liked much anyway so I was eh. Then I saw --- a sleek black cat! It reminds me of Mr. Black! I must have it! So I picked it up. But if I set it down again, how would I find it again? So ... I never set it down again. Made Kliff stand in place, doing nothing, for 3 "days" while I did other IRL things, petting kitty each day. Until finally: Forget anything else, this game is now a 10/10. Yes.

I believe climate patterns are changing, and I believe the ice is melting. It's the predictions of when mega land/human inconvenience/forced changes - like the US East or Gult coast being totally flooded out or weather or farm/food potentials are so severely altered where heavily populated areas are completely abandoned - is still in the "who knows" category, yeah. Like trying to predict the "big one" earthquake wise. Could be 20 years. Could be 75. Or 200. Or maybe it won't hit the areas they think it will, first etc.

Another Legend gone. RIP Mr. Norris, thanks for all the fun action (and sometimes goofy) entertainment.

If you see reviews/gameplays of Crimson Desert and they go on a small rant about UI/interface control setup, it's true. It sucks. Can you get used to it and eventually "memorize" enough for it to work. Sure. But they suck, to the point where you wonder if the UI/interface designer should be fired. It's bad enough that the first few hours feels like learning how to not hate the Ui. I did try controller for a bit but it's not much better. And apparently you can't remap controller layout at all, unless some 3rd party app can force it. I got stuck on that arm wrestling bit (you have to do it re: main questline) because I couldn't do the QTE mash timing, even after 30 tries, no idea why I usually can do those things fine. I finally realized I could spam both the general key on KB and controller at the same time and that bypassed even needing the QTE press timing. Which seems like an oversight but whatever. The world outside is quite pretty even with lowered settings - but lower settings can turn candles/lights/fires into murky/artifact-y low res bloomy lighting making it hard to see in caves and/or at night occasionally. Camera inside tighter areas is annoying. Actual gameplay - it's fine. Exploration motivation is there. Early area combat is super easy (I'm sure it's not forever). The controls/UI is just klunky, time-wasteful/tons of extra clicks and button holds to do anything etc. Cats/dogs to pet everywhere. Little quests, random occasional bandit surprise in early/training area. Many early sidequests you may want to skip, you can't really, because rewards are often inventory increase bags. Early summation: seems like one of those games where if you can get past the bad UI, is one of those "it gets good after 15-20+ hours!" types.

OK, semi-scratch some of the above. For some reason, for me, it looks better on DLSS-Ultra-Performance vs. Balanced. >.> Post-Processing Quality seems to hit fps fairly hard and so far doesn't seem to lose much looks if you have it Low. I might even like it better, since stuff like chromatic aberration/other seems tied to it. Ray Tracing (global illumination) vs. non-RT global seems to have little fps effect on/off so I left it on. Anyway, I got it where it looks pretty good/better on the big TV at 50-55fps. I'll post a vista scenic SS in the pic thread. Don't judge graphics vs performance too much in the tutorial section, wait to you get to the first town/world proper (won't take too long). There's a simple PhotoMode. Kliff still feels like a brick. Flavor NPC's say the same things over and over and over. Voice acting is ok but nothing distinctive. Horse riding is fine. There seems to be an auto-loot chest available but you cannot (?) put anything into it, it's only for "rescuing" dropped loot that you missed/didn't see. I picked up a bird and Kliff just held it in his hand I've gone over refund time, so I guess I'm keeping it. :P

Crimson Desert -- initial setting/performance evaluation etc Spent 70 minutes trying to find performance that fits me. I will say that if you're a 1080/1440 type, the game looks decent, whether native or a bit of upscaling. You can have a lot of things on High/Ultra and it may still get you 60fps, which is good re: older systems. With 4k as the starting resolution, it's a bit tougher on my old rig. I can get the usual mostly 60 if I fiddle a lot, but the game has the usual modern day problem where dropping a lot of settings doesn't really do tons for FPS until you go so low it's awful - and if you go below High on lighting, post-processing, shadows etc it start to look like poo ( especially if using DLSS 4, Quality or Balanced), like more and more artifacting and blurriness. Motion Blur, btw, is under Accessibility. oh, if you have it don't use ray reconstructuring, it appears to dramatically tank fps at the moment. EDITEDIT: so for me it's not that I can't get ok FPS, it's that upscaling doesn't seem to work very well/doesn't look as good as DLSS usually does. Like the way they optimized graphics = less pixels for DLSS to work with and the result is kind of a mess. My main issue in this early time is that Kliff moves like a brick. I feel like if I'm walking and want to get him to turn, he's a 3ton brick. Stiff, slow to respond. It's driving me crazy, can't get used to it yet. This is using KB/Mouse, haven't tried a controller. KB/Mouse can be remapped - somewhat. But there are so many actions that require two or more button inputs, and many actions that use the same key, that it's difficult. I typically want to move anything tied to CNTRL and ALT elsewhere, to the right, and it's tough in this game. And I think WASD cannot be remapped, if you're left-handed or other preference. I am undecided. I guess I have 30-40 more minutes to figure out if refunding/trying later would be better. :P